


Cocooned

by audreycritter



Series: Cor Et Cerebrum [17]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Blankets, Comfort, Drama, Exhaustion, Gen, Sensory seeking behaviors, gen father and son bonding, no profreading we die like mne, ruined books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 06:51:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10939230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Jason has a hard time dealing with books being destroyed.Especially when it's his fault.





	Cocooned

Bruce’s head hit his pillow and three seconds later he was almost completely asleep.

  
One second after that, the door to his bedroom was flung open and the dim light from the hallway flooded the room, seeming overbright when he snapped awake. He relaxed, just incrementally, when Jason stomped into the room and flung all six feet and two hundred-forty pounds of himself across the foot of the bed.

  
“I fucking hate everything,” Jason snapped, tugging a corner of the blanket over his head.

  
“Jay, it’s….” Bruce said wearily, sitting halfway up and glancing at the faint clock readout. “…four in the morning. What are you doing.”

  
“I hate you, too,” Jason said, though his heart didn’t seem to be in it. “Everything and everyone.”

  
Bruce was too tired and too seasoned, by now, to dramatics to let the words bite too deeply without more of an explanation. Even still, they stung a bit.  
“Even Alfred?” he asked, aiming for distraction.

  
There was a long pause and from beneath the corner of the blanket, a muffled, “…no.”

  
“Well, go climb in his bed, then,” Bruce grumbled. “Let me sleep or tell me what’s wrong.”

  
“I don’t hate you,” Jason muttered a few seconds later. “I dozed off and spilled coffee on the book I was reading.”

  
“This seems like an excessive reaction,” Bruce said, falling back against the pillows. The thick blanket on top of him was edging away in jerks and he grabbed for it once but it was yanked out of his hand. He lifted his head enough to see Jason rolling himself in flopping turns, cocooning himself in the comforter.

  
When Jason stopped, he was thoroughly encased in the blanket and Bruce was left with the thin flat sheet. He sighed.

  
“It was Red Harvest,” Jason said. “The only one left from that set you got when–”

  
“I remember,” Bruce said, feeling suddenly helpless. “I’m sorry. We can find another set.”

  
“It’s not the same,” Jason said. “But whatever. I’m fucking overreacting, it’s not anything.”

  
Bruce sat up and yawned and reached down to tousle Jason’s hair, just barely visible through the slight air tunnel he’d left in the blanket.

  
“It’s something,” Bruce said, leaving his hand on Jason’s hair. “I’d be upset, too.”

  
“I’m sorry I threw The Maltese Falcon into the fireplace,” Jason said, turning his head so Bruce’s fingers brush the top of his ear. He doesn’t pull away. “It was stupid.”

  
“It was,” Bruce said, remembering tiny and defiant Jason’s face flickering over to panic the moment he realized what he’d done. He could still picture it with crystal clarity. “But I was more worried about your hands after you tried to pull it back out.”

  
“You kept trying to force painkillers into me,” Jason answered, a little wryly.

  
“I kept walking in on you crying,” Bruce protested, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. “Alfred had to tell me it was about the book. I thought you were in pain.”

  
“I was,” Jason mumbled. “But your repressed soul didn’t have the capacity to understand shit.”

  
Bruce chuckled and tugged on Jason’s ear.

  
“I’m working on it,” Bruce said.

  
“It’s only taken you a fricking decade or more,” Jason said. He exhaled noisily.

“I’m so pissed at myself. I loved that book.”

  
Bruce caught himself right before offering to replace the set, again.

  
“I’m sorry,” he said instead.

  
“I’m gonna get up,” Jason said. “I’ll let you sleep.”

  
“You can stay,” Bruce said, glancing at the clock and dreading waking up in two hours. He was reluctant still to make Jason feel unwelcome. “But I’d like that comforter back.”

  
“Nuh-uh,” Jason mumbled. “Get your own.”

  
“It is my–” Bruce cut himself off.

  
Within the blanket, Jason gently snored. Bruce slowly pulled his hand away from Jason’s hair.

  
Bruce debated getting out of bed and rummaging in the linen closet for another blanket but he decided it was too much work, and pulled the sheet up around his shoulders and went back to sleep.


End file.
